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Junta restricts media coverage of convention on new charter

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(Mizzima/IFEX) - The following is a 17 July 2007 statement from Mizzima News, an interim member of IFEX:

Burmese junta restricts media coverage of convention on new charter

The Burmese junta has imposed restrictions on media coverage of the National Convention on the drafting of the constitution, to be held on 18 July 2007.

Burma has been without a constitution since 1988, when its 1974 charter was suspended following a coup led by a new junta regime. In invitation letters to local media and foreign news agencies in Rangoon, the convening committee specified that only one journalist from each organisation may attend the opening ceremony of the much-criticised constitution drafting process, which is targeted for its final session at the convention.

Journalists were also told not to bring in tape recorders and mobile phones.

"The invitation letter told us not to bring in cell phones, cassette recorders, purses and bags. However, some had carried the items despite the same instructions being given last time," a Rangoon-based foreign correspondent told Mizzima News, a web-based news publication run by exiled Burmese journalists in New Delhi, India.

Based on past experience, journalists will only be allowed to cover the opening ceremony but not the actual convention, which will see the attendance of 1,000 delegates.

"Usually we are allowed to stay there for only 10 to 15 minutes just after the opening ceremony. That's it," the source added.

Meanwhile, some foreign journalists who have applied for visas into the country to cover the convention have yet to obtain them.

The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), which obtained a landslide victory in the 1990 general elections and boycotted the constitution drafting process in protest of the detention of its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has branded the convention as a "sham" since the delegates are mostly hand-picked by the junta.

First held in 1993, the convention was resurrected in 2004 after an eight-year hiatus following NLD's protest walkout. The convention is the first of seven steps on the junta's "roadmap to democracy", to culminate in free elections. The draft constitution must be endorsed by a referendum before a general election can be called.

Restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and assembly persist, amid the government's failure to contend with the range of rights-abusing laws that have been long used to criminalize free speech and prosecute dissidents.As part of the military's "clearance operations" in northern Rakhine State, where thousands of Rohingya Muslims face rampant and systemic human rights violations, the authorities denied independent journalists access to the region since early October.

An officer of the Myanmar army recently filed a criminal complaint against two journalists for allegedly sowing disunity among the military. Even though mediation by the Press Council caused the military to withdraw the case, this incident demonstrates how the military continues to throw its weight to get back at what it perceives as negative publicity.

The Broadcasting Law, approved in August, enabled private companies to enter the broadcast market for the first time. However, it maintains presidential control over the broadcasting sector, and the Broadcasting Council it established is susceptible to political interference.

The report surveys the rocky landscape for media and public discourse since the ruling military junta lifted the curtain on the southeast Asian nation in 2012 after five decades of isolation from the modern world.

As the election looms for later this year, incidents in 2014 and in early 2015 involving the press raises serious questions on the genuineness of media freedom in Burma. The situation is alarming as the state seems to have heaped all the faults and fines on the media in the past year, which has seen a media worker being killed in October on the pretext of national security. International assistance has poured into the country to develop the media aimed at lifting and sustaining the state of media freedom. However, a viable press freedom environment seems unlikely to materialise in Burma before the end of this administration.

There is some skepticism about how much influence Burma's youth movement can assert in terms of political change. Still, activists have benefited from greater access to the Internet, which has brought a new side to the online community after decades of heavy censorship

Burma is at a crossroads. The period of transition since 2010 has opened up the space for freedom of expression to an extent unpredicted by even the most optimistic in the country. Yet this space is highly contingent on a number of volatile factors.

The media landscape in Burma is more open than ever, as President Thein Sein releases imprisoned journalists and abolishes the former censorship regime. But many threats and obstacles to truly unfettered reporting remain, including restrictive laws held over from the previous military regime. The wider government’s commitment to a more open reporting environment is in doubt.

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